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What constitutes proletarianization? The conventional answer to this seemingly simple question often stresses waged labour. Yet many workers, past and present, are routinely unable,to secure paid employment, in part because of the persistence of capitalist crises of various kinds. This study of indigent workers in Toronto from the 1830s to the 1930s is premised on an understanding of proletarianization as dispossession, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ways in which capitalism necessarily produces recurrent crises, leaving many workers wageless. It addresses how wagelessness and poverty were criminalized through the development of institutions of ostensible charitable relief, such as the Toronto House of Industry, in which those seeking shelter and/or sustenance were required to chop wood or, more onerously, break stone in order to be. admitted to the ranks of those 'deserving' of such support. By the end of the nineteenth century-resistance to such "labour tests" was increasingly evident. Protests took place in Toronto, where the black flag was carried in demonstrations demanding "work or bread." Refusing to "crack the stone" and demands that relief be administered differently were common features of mobilizations of the wageless in the opening decades of the twentieth century, in which socialists often took the lead. By the time of capitalism's devastating collapse in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Toronto's wageless were well situated to mount an outcasts' offensive.
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The article presents a speech delivered by the Canadian labor leader Madeleine Parent at the 50th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's Concert at the Peace Arch at the border of Blaine, Washington and Douglas, British Columbia on May 18, 2002. Parent discusses several issues, including peace activism in the U.S., peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the persecution by the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and a call for the international unity of the labour movement.
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The article reviews the book, "Down But Not out: Community and the Upper Streets in Halifax, 1880-1914," by David Hood.
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The article reviews several books including "What’s Left of the Left," edited by James Cronin, George Ross and Jame Shoch, "Social Democracy After the Cold War," edited by Bryan Evans and Ingo Schmidt and "The Labour Party in Britain and Norway," by David Redvaldsen.
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The article reviews the book, "Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972," by Benjamin Isitt.
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The article reviews the book, "In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India," by Alpa Shah.
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The article reviews the book, "Risques psychosociaux : quelle réalité, quels enjeux pour le travail ?," edited by François Hubault.
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The article reviews the book, "A History of Canadian Culture," by Jonathan F. Vance.
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While Australia escaped the harshest aspects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), public services at the federal level have experienced financial stringency in the form of efficiency-related budget cuts from late 2011 as the Australian government strived to achieve a budget surplus. This paper explores the ways in which the main Australian Public Service (APS) trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), developed innovative strategies in 2011 and 2012 to meet this challenge. The CPSU was able to utilize the capacities and experiences gained from operating under a conservative government to expand its activities and capabilities from 2007 under a more socially aware, though neo-liberal, Labor government whose industrial relations legislation and policy agenda were more supportive of collective bargaining. The CPSU developed more targeted campaigns, deployed a broader range of industrial tactics, and mobilized the union's membership in more active and creative ways. The outcome was a renewed form of trade unionism.
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The article reviews the book, "Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement," by David Camfield.
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The article reviews the book, "Occupied St. John's: A Social History of a City at War, 1939-1945," edited by Stephen High.
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The article reviews the book, "Making a Living: Place, Food and Economy in an Inuit Community," by Nicole Gombay.
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Pays homage to the union organizer and labor leader, Madeleine Parent.
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Building on the tradition of emotional labour and aesthetic labour, this study of fitness workers introduces the concept of "ocularcentric labour" (the worker seeking the adoring gaze of the client as the primary reward). It is a state in which labour's quest for the psycho-social rewards gained from their own body image shapes the employment relationship (both the organization of work and the conditions of employment). We argue that for many fitness workers the goal is to gain access to the positional economy of the fitness centre to promote their celebrity. For this they are willing to trade-off standard conditions of employment, and exchange traditional employment rewards for the more intrinsic psycho-social rewards gained through the exposure of their physical capital to the adoration of their gazing clients. Significantly, with ocularcentric labour the worker becomes both the site of production and consumption.
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Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of relevant primary documents, this article explores the 1996 unionization of full-time academic faculty at Brock University, a public and primarily undergraduate university in southern Ontario, Canada. The case study examines both the impetus for unionization and the strategies employed by the faculty association in support of certification with a view to demonstrating how discourses of professionalism and collegiality can be challenged, subverted, and redeployed by academics intent on organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately winning support for unionization.
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The article reviews the book, "One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada 1900-2000," by Therese Jennissen and Colleen Lundy.
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This article provides an overview of current research on older workers with caregiving responsibilities from Canadian perspective. The first section presents relevant demographic and policy trends. The second section outlines impacts of these trends on caregiving employees, communities, employers, businesses and governments. The third section identifies potential policy responses and program solutions that support the needs of older workers with caregiving responsibilities. The article concludes with a recommended plan of action to move forward in addressing the emerging challenges associated with this issue.
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The article reviews the book, "The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000," edited by Lex Heerma Vam Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise Van Nedeveen Meerkert.
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The article reviews the book, "The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900-1955," by Oscar Chamosa.
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The authors exploit immigrant identifiers in the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the longitudinal dimension of these data to compare the labor force and job dynamics of immigrants and nativeborn workers. They examine the role of job, as opposed to worker, heterogeneity in driving immigrant wage disparities and investigate how the paths into and out of jobs of varying quality compare between immigrant and native-born workers. They find that the disparity in immigrant job quality, which does not appear to diminish with years since arrival, reflects a combination of relatively low transitions into high-wage jobs and high transitions out of these jobs. The former result appears to be due equally to difficulties obtaining high-wage jobs directly out of unemployment and to using low-wage jobs as stepping-stones. The authors find little or no evidence, however, that immigrant job seekers face barriers to low-wage jobs.